Brubeck director wants Stockton on jazz map

There's also plenty of communication and improvisation involved. Community, too.

Rowe is working diligently to make Stockton a legitimate Jazztown. He's getting lots of help. It's a long way from New Orleans or Kansas City, but progress is being made.

That's mostly due to the artistic and cultural accomplishments of Dave Brubeck (1920-2012), the now-venerated jazz pianist whose name graces University of the Pacific's Brubeck Institute and its annual Brubeck Festival.

The 1942 Pacific graduate's international reputation and commitment to education and diversification have helped his namesake institute gain visibility and credibility on a similar scale.

The Brubeck Festival has been a vital component. In March, Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Orchestra helped accelerate that awareness. (Marsalis, 52, was named director of jazz studies at New York's Juilliard School on Monday.)

March 27 through 29, Al Jarreau, Eddie Palmieri and Terri Lyne Carrington are scheduled to sustain that momentum during the 13th Brubeck Festival.

"The idea is to create more town-and-gown flux between businesses and the city proper and educational institutions," said Rowe, who's in his third year as Brubeck Institute director. "The first effort went extremely well. I feel there was a real change. We're deliberately just trying to continue that flux."

The major fluctuation in 2013 was involving more aspects of the community - including Stockton Unified School District students - and four venues, expanding the festival to off-campus locations. That continues.

In 2014, Palmieri, 76, a veteran pianist, band leader and Latin jazz ambassador from New York, opens the three-day festival - with his band - March 27 at San Joaquin Delta College's Atherton Auditorium.

Jarreau, 73, a master of vocal invention and improvisation originally from Milwaukee, performs March 28 at the Bob Hope Theatre.

Carrington, 46, a multi-faceted drummer, composer and record producer from Medford, Mass., closes the festival March 29 at Pacific's Faye Spanos Concert Hall.

Tickets for the Grammy Award-winning lineup won't be available until mid-November.

"I feel there's been a lot of receptivity," said Rowe, 51, who learned to appreciate American jazz while growing up in Sydney. "This year, a whole spate of sponsors came on already. We're not having to start at zero. Instead, it's a standing start. We've got some momentum."

That thrust has been enhanced by weekly shows and jam sessions at Take 5 Jazz at the Brew, the revamped Pacific Avenue venue (Valley Brewing Company) that again will be a hub for similar activity in 2014. The Brubeck Institute Jazz Quintet plays a prominent role.

Jarreau and Carrington will lead on-campus seminars.

The teenage members of the Brubeck quintet - who spend two years exclusively studying jazz - have extended the institute's reach and reputation with regional club and theater performances and appearances at the Monterey Jazz Festival and in Washington, D.C., and New York.

The Brubeck Institute's ongoing viability and increasing visibility - many of the Brubeck Institute students develop professional careers and become credible contacts - also have helped make Stockton a viable, hospitable option for a wide range of touring musicians who perform at Take 5 Jazz.

That also ups the credibility level when Brian Hendrick, a drummer and jazz director, is scheduling his periodic shows at Delta College. He's also a regular Take 5 jammer who leads his own 18-piece big band and directs jazz studies at Delta.

"The activity at the jazz club and the levels of engagement and momentum have just sort of carried through," said Rowe, a piano player and organist who's a regular performer at Take 5 and experienced similar acceptance in a club-college setting in Fargo, N.D.

As always, Rowe is acknowledging the kind of diversity and concern for community that qualified Brubeck - who died Sept. 6, 2012, in Norwalk, Conn., at age 91 - as representing more than a world-class musician.

"We're trying again to cover a real eclectic approach to music," Rowe said of Jarreau's vocal vamping, Palmieri's Puerto Rican-based rhythms and Carrington's contemporary creativity. "We've got the young and up-and-coming and the elder statesmen."

The Brubeck Festival also is being linked to a week (April 7-12) of concerts and events paying homage to Brubeck in New York. The institute's student quintet plays nightly at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola.

Brubeck was helping Marsalis plan the program two weeks prior to his death. Rowe was present during those meetings at the Brubeck home in Wilton, Conn.

"I would hope so," Rowe said. "I certainly get the sense our work to engage the community - at the local, regional, even national level - is becoming more realized. There's a real recognition that jazz and the world of education are becoming much more connected."

Ultimately, Rowe knows who knows best.

"I think he would be very happy," he said of Brubeck, a Concord native who grew up on an Ione cattle ranch. "His closest representative on this planet is Iola, his wife of 70 years. I hear from her on a weekly basis. She's absolutely thrilled with our various enterprises."